The UK equivalent of a Pip-Boy 3000, which is nice to see after so many hours with the wrist-mounted one. Team FOLON
‘Ello, what’s all this, then?
Fallout: London takes place 160 years after the global nuclear war, 40 years before Fallout 3, and in a part of the world that is both remote and didn’t really have official Fallout lore. That means a lot of the typical Fallout fare—Deathclaws, Super Mutants, the Pip-Boy 3000—is left out.
Or, rather, replaced with scores of new enemies, lore, companions, factions, and even some mechanics picked up from the modding scene (ladders!). It’s a kick to see the across-the-pond variants of wasteland stuff: tinned beans, medieval weapons, the Atta-Boy personal computer. There is at least one dog, a bulldog, and his name is Churchill.
As for the story, stop me if you’ve heard this one before: You, newly awakened from an underground chamber (not a Vault, though), enter a ruined London, one riven by factions with deep disagreements about how to move things forward. You’ll take up quests, pick sides, befriend or blast people, and do a lot of peeking into abandoned buildings, hoping to find that last screw you need for a shotgun modification.
London falling
When you first start Fallout: London, you’ll see a London that looks like, honestly, crap. Whatever London did to anger the nuke-having powers of the world, it got them good and mad, and parts of the city are very busted. The city’s disposition to underground spaces has done it well, though, and you can often find yesteryear’s glory in a Tube tunnel, a bunker, or a basement.
As you move on, you’ll get the surge of seeing a part of London you remember, either from a visit or from media, and how it looks with a bit of char to it. The post-war inhabitants have also made their own spaces inside the ruins, some more sophisticated and welcoming than others. Everywhere you look, you can see that familiar Fallout aesthetic—1950s atomic-minded culture persisting until its downfall—shifted into Greenwich Mean Time.
There comes a point in most experienced Steam shoppers’ lives where they wonder what would happen if their account was canceled or stolen, or perhaps they just stopped breathing. It’s scary to think about how many games in your backlog will never get played; scarier, still, to think about how you don’t, in most real senses of the word, own any of them.
Now Valve, seemingly working to comply with a new California law targeting “false advertising” of “digital goods,” has added language to its checkout page to confirm that thinking. “A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam,” the Steam cart now tells its customers, with a link to the Steam Subscriber Agreement further below.
Credit: Kevin Purdy
California’s AB2426 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Sept. 26, excludes subscription-only services, free games, and digital goods that offer “permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet.” Otherwise, sellers of digital goods cannot use the terms “buy, purchase,” or related terms that would “confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good.” And they must explain, conspicuously, in plain language, that “the digital good is a license” and link to terms and conditions.
I was on vacation last week, the kind of vacation in which entire days had no particular plan. I had brought the ROG Ally X with me, and, with the review done and Windows still annoying me, I looked around at the DIY scene, wondering if things had changed since my last foray into DIY Steam Deck cloning.
Things had changed for the better. I tried out Bazzite, and after dealing with the typical Linux installation tasks—activating the BIOS shortcut, turning off Secure Boot, partitioning—I had the Steam Deck-like experience I had sought on this more powerful handheld. Since I installed Bazzite, I have not had to mess with drivers, hook up to a monitor and keyboard for desktop mode, or do anything other than play games.
Until Valve officially makes SteamOS available for the ROG Ally and (maybe) other handhelds, Bazzite is definitely worth a look for anyone who thinks their handheld could do better.
Bazzite says that you can swap an SD card full of games between any two systems running Bazzite. This kind of taunting possibility is very effective on people like me. Credit: Bazzite
More game platforms, more customization, same Steam-y feel
There are a few specific features for the ROG Ally X tossed into Bazzite, and the Linux desktop is Fedora, not Arch. Beyond that, it is like SteamOS but better, especially if you want to incorporate non-Steam games. Bazzite bakes in apps like Lutris, Heroic, and Junk Store, which Steam Deck owners often turn to for loading in games from Epic, GOG, itch.io, and other stores, as well as games with awkward Windows-only launchers.
You don’t even need to ditch Windows, really. If you’re using a handheld like the ROG Ally X, with its 1TB of storage, you can dual-boot Bazzite and Windows with some crafty partition shrinking. By all means, check that your game saves are backed up first, but you can, with some guide-reading, venture into Bazzite without abandoning the games for which you need Windows.
Perhaps most useful to the type of person who owns a gaming handheld and also will install Linux on it, Bazzite gives you powerful performance customization at the click of a button. Tap the ROG Ally’s M1 button on the back, and you can mess with Thermal Design Power (TDP), set a custom fan curve, change the charge limit, tweak CPU and GPU parameters, or even choose a scheduler. I most appreciated this for the truly low-power indie games I played, as I could set the ROG Ally below its standard 13 W “Silent” profile down to a custom 7 W without heading deep into Asus’ Armoury Crate.
Valve Corporation, tired of paying arbitration fees, has removed a mandatory arbitration clause from Steam’s subscriber agreement. Valve told gamers in yesterday’s update that they must sue the company in order to resolve disputes.
The subscriber agreement includes “changes to how disputes and claims between you and Valve are resolved,” Steam wrote in an email to users. “The updated dispute resolution provisions are in Section 10 and require all claims and disputes to proceed in court and not in arbitration. We’ve also removed the class action waiver and cost and fee-shifting provisions.”
The Steam agreement previously said that “you and Valve agree to resolve all disputes and claims between us in individual binding arbitration.” Now, it says that any claims “shall be commenced and maintained exclusively in any state or federal court located in King County, Washington, having subject matter jurisdiction.”
Steam’s email to users said the updated terms “will become effective immediately when you agree to it, including when you make most purchases, fund your Steam wallet, or otherwise accept it. Otherwise, the updated Steam Subscriber Agreement will become effective on November 1, 2024, unless you delete or discontinue use of your Steam account before then.” Steam also pushed a pop-up message to gamers asking them to agree to the new terms.
One likely factor in Valve’s decision to abandon arbitration is mentioned in a pending class-action lawsuit over game prices that was filed last month in US District Court for the Western District of Washington. The Steam users who filed the suit previously “mounted a sustained and ultimately successful challenge to the enforceability of Valve’s arbitration provision,” their lawsuit said. “Specifically, the named Plaintiffs won binding decisions from arbitrators rendering Valve’s arbitration provision unenforceable for both lack of notice and because it impermissibly seeks to bar public injunctive relief.”
Mandatory arbitration clauses are generally seen as bad for consumers, who are deprived of the ability to seek compensation through individual or class-action lawsuits. But many Steam users were able to easily get money from Valve through arbitration, according to law firms that filed the arbitration cases over allegedly inflated game prices.
Valve sued lawyers behind arbitration claims
Valve used to prefer arbitration because few consumers brought claims and the process kept the company’s legal costs low. But in October 2023, Valve sued a law firm in an attempt to stop it from submitting loads of arbitration claims on behalf of gamers.
Valve’s suit complained that “unscrupulous lawyers” at law firm Zaiger, LLC presented a plan to a potential funder “to recruit 75,000 clients and threaten Valve with arbitration on behalf of those clients, thus exposing Valve to potentially millions of dollars of arbitration fees alone: 75,000 potential arbitrations times $3,000 in fees per arbitration is two hundred and twenty-five million dollars.”
Valve said that Zaiger’s “extortive plan” was to “offer a settlement slightly less than the [arbitration] charge—$2,900 per claim or so—attempting to induce a quick resolution.”
“Zaiger targeted Valve and Steam users for its scheme precisely because the arbitration clause in the SSA [Steam Subscriber Agreement] is ‘favorable’ to Steam users in that Valve agrees to pay the fees and costs associated with arbitration,” Valve said.
Zaiger has a “Steam Claims” website that says, “Tens of thousands of Steam users have engaged Zaiger LLC to hold Steam’s owner, Valve, accountable for inflated prices of PC games.” The website said that through arbitration, “many consumers get compensation offers without doing anything beyond completing the initial form.” Another law firm called Mason LLP used a similar strategy to help gamers bring arbitration claims against Steam.
There hadn’t previously been many arbitration cases against Steam, Valve’s lawsuit against Zaiger said. “In the five years before Zaiger began threatening Valve, 2017 to 2022, there were only two instances where Valve and a Steam user could not resolve that user’s issue before proceeding to arbitration. Both of those arbitrations were resolved in Valve’s favor, and Valve paid all of the arbitrator fees and costs for both Valve and the impacted Steam user,” Valve said.
Valve’s lawsuit against Zaiger was dismissed without prejudice on August 20, 2024. The ruling in US District Court for the Western District of Washington said the case was dismissed because the court lacks jurisdiction over Zaiger.
Enlarge/ It’s hard work, survival crafting, but there are moments for song, dance, and tankards.
North Beach Games
The dwarves of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing are, according to the author himself, “a tough, thrawn race for the most part, secretive, retentive of the memory of injuries (and of benefits),” and “lovers… of things that take shape under the hands of the craftsmen rather than things that live by their own life.”
Is it secrecy and avarice that explains why The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria spent its first year of existence as an exclusive to the Epic Games Store? None can say for certain. But the survival crafting game has today arrived on Steam and Xbox, adding to its PlayStation and EGS platforms and bringing a 1.3 “Golden Update” to them all. Steam Deck compatibility is on its way to Verified, with a bunch of handheld niceties already in place.
The Golden Update grants new and existing players a procedurally generated sandbox mode to complement the game’s (also generated) campaign, new weapons and armor, crossplay between all platforms with up to eight players, specific sliders for difficulty settings, and… a pause function in offline single-player, which seemingly was not there before.
Launch trailer for Return to Moria on Steam and consoles (and its Golden Update).
What are you actually doing in Return to Moria? You, a dwarf in the Fourth Age of Middle-Earth, are tasked by Gimli Lockbearer with heading into Moria (i.e. Khazad-dûm) to recover its treasures. Except every Moria is different, generated from random generation seeds. You mine for materials, use materials to make gear and goods, set up base camps with stations and fixtures, and, of course, fight the things you awaken in the depths.
The campaign is procedurally generated, but it tells a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. And runes—lots of runes.
North Beach Games
Dwarves? Underground? Making stuff? Yes, of course.
North Beach Games
There will be goblins.
North Beach Games
Not only does a release on new cross-compatible platforms give you a chance to check out a potentially overlooked gem, but this is also version 1.3 of the game. Reviews of the game at release in October 2023 were closely aligned around one point: it needed more time to cook.
PC Gamer found the game authentic to Tolkien’s lore, intriguing in its depictions of underground spaces, and alternately goofy and harrowing in building and fighting. But bugs, stuttering, clipping errors, and disbelief-shattering oddities brought the experience down a good deal. Polygon was more critical of the game’s tile-based layouts and laborious backtracking. “A few patches could see this become a survival game that can hold its own against the more popular entries in the genre,” wrote Ford James.
In a “Quality of Life Showcase,” Game Director Jon-Paul Dumont details how the game has advanced over the past 10 months. The map is color-coded and easier to read, the ambient music and transitions are improved, combat improvements make it feel better and more grounded (another point of review contention), and player gripes about inventory management, cooking, building, and crafting have been tackled.
I haven’t played enough of the game to render any kind of verdict on it, but I’m always eager to see the work of a team actively fixing after launch—digging in, if you will.
Tetris Forever includes several versions of the game that had been released over the years.
Nintendo
There’s also a new game called Tetris Time Warp that combines gameplay styles from several prior entries.
Nintendo
A combination documentary and classic game compilation called Tetris Forever is headed to PC, Nintendo Switch, and other platforms later this year, according to an announcement.
The game will include 15 Tetris games, from an “accurate” version of the first Tetris for the Electronika 60 to an NES version of the game and more, including Tetris 2 + Bombliss, Super Tetris 3, and Tetris Battle Gaiden, among others.
In addition to that, it will feature a new take called Tetris Time Warp, which will see players jumping “between gameplay styles from across the series” in real time as they complete each board. The game will support up to four players.
The game is developed by Digital Eclipse, which previously made waves with a docu-game called The Making of Karateka that combined the classic game with documentary footage. It also made a remaster of the original Wizardry.
Tetris Forever is the latest in the same docu-game series that included The Making of Karateka. As such, the classic games will be presented in an interactive digital museum-like format and will be accompanied by over an hour of documentary clips “about the history of Tetris and its key players.”
Tetris Forever was announced as part of a Nintendo Direct stream this morning. The reveal focused on the experience of playing the game on the Nintendo Switch and also noted that the original NES version of Tetris is coming to Nintendo Switch Online’s classic game library this winter.
However, the game also appeared on Steam, so there will be a PC release. Releases on other consoles are likely as well. The Steam page says the game is coming sometime before the end of this year but doesn’t get more specific than that. There’s no pricing information yet, either.
The Tetris Forever announcement video from Nintendo Direct.
Enlarge/ The same gorgeous vistas return in the Riven remake.
Samuel Axon
A remake of Riven: The Sequel to Myst launched this week, made by the original game’s developers. It strikes a fascinating balance between re-creation and reinvention, and based on a couple of hours of playing it, it’s a resounding success.
Myst was the classic most people remembered fondly from the early CD-ROM era, but for me, its sequel, Riven, was the highlight. After that, the sequels declined in quality. The sophomore effort was the apex.
It was certainly more ambitious than Myst. Instead of a handful of tightly packed theme park worlds, it offered a singular, cohesive one that felt lived in and steeped in history in a way that Myst couldn’t quite match.
A worthy presentation
That was thanks to outstanding art direction but also to its iconic musical score.
For the most part, the remake nails both of those things. While the original game resembled the first Myst in that you had to click to scroll between static images to explore the game’s world, the new one follows the 2020 Myst remake (and 2000’s oft-forgotten realMyst) in giving the player full movement, akin to contemporary first-person puzzle games like Portal, The Witness, or The Talos Principle. Since it’s easy to re-create a lot of the original camera angles this way, it might have been cool if there had been an option to control the game as you did originally, but I can see why that wasn’t a priority.
Enlarge/ The environments are just as atmospheric and detailed as they used to be.
Samuel Axon
It just so happens that today’s graphics hardware does an outstanding job of replicating previously static visuals in full 3D. (There’s even VR support, though I haven’t tried it yet.) And the music is just as good as it used to be.
There are only two downsides on the presentation front. First, I’ve heard that folks running on older machines may struggle to achieve satisfactory fidelity and performance. I played it on both an M1 Max MacBook Pro and a Windows 11 desktop with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080. The MacBook Pro ran the game at maxed-out settings at the laptop’s native resolution at around 30 frames per second. The desktop did the same at 4K at 120 fps. But those are both high-end, recent-ish machines, so your mileage may vary.
Second, the full-motion video performances in the original game have been replaced with full 3D, video game-looking characters. It’s a necessary concession, but I feel some of the character was lost. They did a pretty good job matching the motions of the original videos, though.
The original’s FMV performances have been replaced by respectable but still video game-ish 3D models.
Enlarge/ Blast away all the guilt you want in PowerWash Simulator, but there’s no need to feel dirty in the real world about your backlog.
Getty Images
Gaming news site PCGamesN has a web tool, SteamIDFinder, that can do a neat trick. If you buy PC games on Steam and have your user profile set to make your gaming details public, you can enter your numeric user ID into it and see a bunch of stats. One set of stats is dedicated to the total value of the games listed as unplayed; you can share this page as an image linking to your “Pile of Shame,” which includes the total “Value” of your Steam collection and unplayed games.
Example findings from SteamIDFinder, from someone who likely has hundreds of games from Humble Bundles and other deals in their library.
SteamIDFinder
Using data from what it claims are the roughly 10 percent of 73 million Steam accounts in its database set to Public, PCGamesN extrapolates $1.9 billion in unplayed games, multiplies it by 10, and casually suggests that there are $19 billion in unplayed games hanging around. That is “more than the gross national product of Nicaragua, Niger, Chad, or Mauritius,” the site notes.
That is a very loose “$19 billion”
“Multiply by 10” is already a pretty soft science, but the numbers are worth digging into further. For starters, SteamIDFinder is using the current sale price of every game in your unplayed library, as confirmed by looking at a half-dozen “Pile of Shame” profiles. An informal poll of Ars Technica co-workers and friends with notable Steam libraries suggests that games purchased at full price make up a tiny fraction of the games in our backlogs. Games acquired through package deals, like the Humble Bundle, or during one of Steam’s annual or one-time sales, are a big part of most people’s Steam catalogs, I’d reckon.
Step 1 to seeing your unplayed collection: Click the three-vertical-bar icon next to your Steam library to filter, choose “Games,” then “Group by Collection” …
Andrew Cunningham
… And pick “Unplayed” as a Play State filter.
Andrew Cunningham
Then there’s what counts as “Unplayed.” Clicking on the filtering tool next to my Steam library and choosing “Unplayed” suggests that I have 54 titles out of 173 total that I have never cracked open. My own manual count of my library is closer to 45. Steam and I disagree on whether I’ve launched and played Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition (I definitely did and was definitely overwhelmed), Mountain, and SteamWorld Dig. And Steam is definitely not counting games that you buy through Steam, mod in some way, and then launch directly through a Windows executable. I’m certain I’ve played some TIE Fighter: Total Conversion, just not through Valve’s channels. One Ars editor played Half-Life 2 multiple times from 2004–2007, but Steam says they’ve never played it, because it didn’t start counting gameplay hours until March 2009.
Even if they’re not dedicated tools, Steam libraries sometimes end up with little bits of game that you didn’t ask for and might never play, like Half-Life Deathmatch: Source. I have quite a few Star Wars games that I never intend to launch, because they were part of a bundle that got me Jedi Knight and Jedi Outcast for cheaper than either game cost on its own.
What “shame” really looks like
Curious as to what people’s backlogs look like, I asked friends and co-workers to run their own numbers after checking them for errors and oddities. Here’s the Ars list:
Kevin Purdy: 173 games, 45 unplayed (26 percent)
Lee Hutchinson: 361 games, 109 unplayed (30 percent)
Andrew Cunningham: 172 games, 79 unplayed (46 percent)
Friends who did a check ended up at 25 percent, 40 percent, and 52 percent. So nobody I could easily poll had fewer than 25 percent of their games unplayed, and those with higher numbers tended to have bought into bundles, sales, add-ons, and other entry generators. And nobody thought their dollar value total made any sense at all, given the full-price math.
Back in 2014, Kyle Orland went deep on Steam statistics. Among games released since Steam started tracking hour counts in March 2009, 26 percent had never been played at that point, while another 19 percent had only been played for an hour or less. That’s roughly 45 percent of games having been played for an essentially token amount of time.
There is a much larger point to argue here, too: You do not have to feel “shame” about giving too much money to people making games, especially smaller games, if you do not want to. This applies to even broader understandings of “Unplayed,” like checking out an intro level or two. Sometimes playing a game for a little bit and deciding it’s not something you want to put dozens more hours into is worth it, whether or not you go for the refund.
If you’ve looked up your own stats and feel surprised, you can keep your unplayed games as a dedicated collection in Steam, and it might inspire you to check out the most intriguing left-behinds. Or, like me, filter that list further by the games that are Steam Deck Verified and bring them on your next trip.
You can usually make additional money more easily than additional life. Nobody is going to inherit your Steam library (probably), so it’s not really worth anything anyway. Play what interests you when you have the time, and if your unplayed count helps you stave off your worst sale impulse buys or rediscover lost gems, so be it. There are neat tricks, but there is no real math—and no real shame.
Enlarge / But… but I was just about to check out Tacoma.
Getty Images
With Valve’s Steam gaming platform approaching the US drinking age this year, more and more aging PC gamers may be considering what will happen to their vast digital game libraries after they die. Unfortunately, legally, your collection of hundreds of backlogged games will likely pass into the ether along with you someday.
The issue of digital game inheritability gained renewed attention this week as a ResetEra poster quoted a Steam support response asking about transferring Steam account ownership via a last will and testament. “Unfortunately, Steam accounts and games are non-transferable” the response reads. “Steam Support can’t provide someone else with access to the account or merge its contents with another account. I regret to inform you that your Steam account cannot be transferred via a will.”
This isn’t the first time someone has asked this basic estate planning question, of course. Last year, a Steam forum user quoted a similar response from Steam support as saying, “Your account is yours and yours alone. Now you can share it with family members, but you cannot give it away.”
Potential loopholes
As a practical matter, Steam would have little way of knowing if you wrote down your Steam username and password and left instructions for your estate to give that information to your descendants. When it comes to legal ownership of that account, though, the Steam Subscriber Agreement seems relatively clear.
“You may not reveal, share, or otherwise allow others to use your password or Account except as otherwise specifically authorized by Valve,” the agreement reads, in part. “You may… not sell or charge others for the right to use your Account, or otherwise transfer your Account, nor may you sell, charge others for the right to use, or transfer any Subscriptions other than if and as expressly permitted by this Agreement… or as otherwise specifically permitted by Valve.”
Eagle-eyed readers might notice a potential loophole, though, in the clauses regarding account transfers that are “specifically permitted by Valve.” Steam forum users have suggested in the past that Valve “wouldn’t block this change of ownership” via a will if a user or their estate specifically requests it (Valve has not responded to a request for comment).
Donating all those 3DS and Wii U games to someone else might be difficult for Jirard “The Completionist” Khalil.
There also might be a partial, physical workaround for Steam users who bequeath an actual computer with downloaded titles installed. In a 2013 Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal article, author Claudine Wong writes that “digital content is transferable to a deceased user’s survivors if legal copies of that content are located on physical devices, such as iPods or Kindle e-readers.” But if that descendant wanted to download those games to a different device or reinstall them in the case of a hard drive failure, they’d legally be out of luck.
Beyond personal estate planning, the inability to transfer digital game licenses has some implications for video game preservation work as well. Last year, Jirard “The Completionist” Khalil spent nearly $20,000 to purchase and download every digital 3DS and Wii U game while they were still available. And while Khalil said he intends to donate the physical machines (and their downloads) to the Video Game History Foundation, subscriber agreements mean the charity may have trouble taking legal ownership of those digital games and accounts.
“There is no reasonable, legal path for the preservation of digital-born video games,” VGHF’s then co-director Kelsey Lewin told Ars last year. “Limiting library access only to physical games might have worked 20 years ago, but we no longer live in a world where all games are sold on physical media, and we haven’t for a long time.”
Enlarge/ Aiming a single rifle sight into an earth-moving explosion feels like some kind of metaphor for the Helldivers 2 delayed PSN requirement saga.
PlayStation/Arrowhead
Helldivers 2 PC players can continue doing their part for Super Earth, sans Sony logins.
Sony’s plan for its surprise hit co-op squad shooter—now the most successful launch in Sony’s nascent PC catalog—Helldivers 2, was to make its players sign in with PlayStation Network (PSN) accounts before it launched in early February, even if they purchased the game through the Steam store.
Sony and developer Arrowhead didn’t enforce PSN logins during its frenetic launch and then announced late last week that PSN accounts would soon be mandatory. Many players did not like that at all, seeing in it a sudden desire by Sony to capitalize on its unexpected smash hit. Some were not eager to engage with a network that had a notable hack in its history, others were concerned about countries where PSN was not offered, and many didn’t take Sony at its word that this was about griefing, banning, and other moderation. Because of the uneven availability of Steam and PSN, Helldivers 2 was delisted in 177 countries on Steam over the weekend as Steam worked through refund requests.
The pushback made an impression, and now Sony has announced that account linking “will not be moving forward.” In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Sunday night addressed to Helldivers fans, the official PlayStation account wrote that the publisher had “heard your feedback” and was “still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable.”
“Feedback,” in this case, likely included a long weekend of both PlayStation and Arrowhead hearing from a Helldivers fanbase that had previously been relatively sanguine and cohesive, at least for an online multiplayer shooter. Steam reviews of Helldivers 2 took a sad but predictable plummet downward, the game’s subreddit pivoted from cosigned enthusiasm to protest, and lots of people tied to the game spent a lot of time over the weekend trying to address the surge of negative social media.
Johan Pilestedt, CEO of Arrowhead Games Studio, after facetiously asking if now was the moment “to tweet ‘What? You guys don’t have phones?'”, posted on X early Sunday that his firm was “talking solutions with PlayStation, especially for non-PSN countries.” Responding to a reply that asked why he or his firm were “acting all blameless,” Pilestedt was candid. “I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this – it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn’t talk about it enough,” Pilestedt wrote.
He added, ‘We knew for about 6 months before launch that it would be mandatory for online PS titles.” Asked why, if known for 6 months, the game was sold to countries without PSN available, he responded, “We do not handle selling the game.”
It will certainly be interesting to see what Sony does next with its success beyond consoles. Helldivers 2 is by far its most successful PC launch to date, and its seventh highest-grossing game overall. There’s a market there for the right kinds of games, but how Sony cultivates that market, and whether they’ll welcome Sony as anything beyond a publisher on Steam, remains to be seen.
The developer of Ghost of Tsushima, arriving soon on PC, made sure to note Friday on X/Twitter that a PSN account was only required for the multiplayer mode of the game, not the single-player adventure.
This post was update at 10: 41 a.m. to note prior international delistings, and Sony’s clarification about PSN requirements for an upcoming game.
Enlarge/ This gear is from the upcoming “Polar Patriots” Premium Warbond in Helldivers 2. It’s an upcoming change the developer and publisher likely wish was getting more attention of late.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
There’s a lot of stories about the modern PC gaming industry balled up inside one recent “update” to Helldivers 2.
Sony Interactive Entertainment announced Thursday night that current players of the runaway hit co-op shooter will have to connect their Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account starting on May 30, with a hard deadline of June 4. New players will be required to connect the two starting Monday, May 6.
Officially, this is happening because of the “safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games.” Account linking allows Sony to ban abusive players, and also gives banned players the right to appeal. Sony writes that it would have done this at launch, but “Due to technical issues … we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional. That grace period will now expire.”
“We understand that while this may be an inconvenience to some of you, this step will help us to continue to build a community that you are all proud to be a part of,” Sony writes in the update. The Helldivers community on Reddit is flush with dissenting posts today, and Steam reviews of the game have taken a marked turn since the announcement.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Oh, right, that PlayStation Network
It’s the combination of “safety and security” and “Sony” that make this more than just the typical grousing about game launchers, cross-play, or other user/password demands. The PlayStation Network was fully and famously hacked in April 2011, with 77 million users’ names, addresses, emails, birthdays, passwords, and logins compromised. Sony Online Entertainment also suffered a separate attack while PSN was down, exposing millions more accounts and thousands of credit card numbers. PSN came partially back online 26 days later, then fully online two weeks later, with a complimentary year of identity protection and Welcome Back packages for subscribers. Less than a month later, other aspects of Sony were hacked by LulzSec.
Those with a long enough memory of computers, security, and Sony might also recall the Sony rootkit debacle, which, while nearly 20 years old now, was such a notably bad and bizarre thing that it stuck around.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
An online game people want less online
Helldivers 2 was not supposed to be this big a game. Sony was still cautiously trodding into PC games after years of treating its exclusive and first-party games as console leverage. Helldivers 2 was a sequel to a game that, while well-regarded, didn’t land as a smash hit.
That success hurts the optics of Sony’s demand, months after it had an unexpected hit, that players must now register with its far-from-trusted network to keep playing. A non-mega-budgeted game, a trial-balloon sequel, hits big, and Sony, finding its footing in this new realm, doesn’t want to leave said opportunity as a one-time Steam purchase.
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Two blimps jousting overhead
Helldivers 2 is explicitly multiplayer, and the action takes place on Sony’s servers. But Steam is the means by which Helldivers 2 reaches its players, fosters engagement, and, of course, tries to entice them into DLC, further sequels, and perhaps other Sony PC games—so long as they’re on also on Steam.
There are no rock-solid numbers on Steam’s PC gaming market share, but we know that the biggest competitor, Epic Games, is losing hundreds of millions of dollars each year giving away games just to get some kind of foothold. Steam’s market position, recommendation whims, and broad 30 percent revenue cut have left many companies searching for ways to disentangle their futures from a single platform. Sony just happens to be the one making the hard ask, for reasons that don’t entirely sound obvious months later, and with a network that has some tough Google search results.
It’s worth noting that PSN is not necessarily available in all countries where Steam sells games. We’ve reached out to Sony to ask about this and for further comment on their PSN requirement, and will update this post if we hear back.
“Early Access” was once a novel, quirky thing, giving a select set of Steam PC games a way to involve enthusiastic fans in pre-alpha-level play-testing and feedback. Now loads of games launch in various forms of Early Access, in a wide variety of readiness. It’s been a boon for games like Baldur’s Gate 3, which came a long way across years of Early Access.
Early Access, and the “Advanced Access” provided for complete games by major publishers for “Deluxe Editions” and the like, has also been a boon to freeloaders. Craven types could play a game for hours and hours, then demand a refund within the standard two hours of play, 14 days after the purchase window of the game’s “official” release. Steam-maker Valve has noticed and, as of Tuesday night, updated its refund policy.
“Playtime acquired during the Advanced Access period will now count towards the Steam refund period,” reads the update. In other words: Playtime is playtime now, so if you’ve played more than two hours of a game in any state, you don’t get a refund. That closes at least one way that people could, with time-crunched effort, play and enjoy games for free in either Early or Advanced access.
Not that it’s a complete win for either developers or cautious buyers. Steam refunds are a tricky matter for developers, especially those smaller in size. The two-hour playtime window can give people a decent idea of how a game runs, what it’s like, and whether it’s clicking with a certain player. But some games enter Early Access in very rough shape or have features that later get dropped. Some games pack their most appealing elements into the early game. And some indie games are intended to provide an experience that’s much closer to two hours than 40 or 80, still giving players a faceless way to grab back some cash.
Steam’s approach to refunds remains an imperfect science, full of quirky stories and examples of why it exists. But it has moved toward a more unified and at least understandable policy now.
